Wednesday, February 27, 2008

If you've ever wondered how I choose my links...It's mostly general surfing + what people send me using the e-mail link to the "tips, suggestion" in the upper right hand corner + regular favorites from my rss feeds. I will be revamping my link lists / subscriptions soon... eager to find new stuff. So if you'd like me to notice your blog or any blog you think does great work, send it to the e-mail with "FYC" in the title field.

MiscellaniaTrading Faces funny popculture genealogy for 'Project Runway Too Gay'Slant Magazine goes to NY Fashion Week. Asides to Project Runway, America's Next Top Model, and Sex & The City: The Movie for you tv maniacsSeriously? OMG! WTF? Natalie loves Scarlett's twinsCulture Snub investigates credible motives and character flaws in There Will Be Blood and Michael Clayton. I beg to differ on a couple points about the latter, but a good readJezebelSex & The City trailer. Lots of plot reveals.

Pfun with Pfeifferflickr Attack of mega giantess MichellePersonal Effects LaPfeiffer's new movie has a trailer. This is the one with Ashton Kutchner-MooreCoraline teaser. OK, strictly speaking this has nothing to do with Michelle Pfeiffer. But she was originally supposed to play "Mother/Other Mother" when this was going to be a live action film. And now it's animated and it's... um... Teri Hatcher.

still hung up on Oscar?...and you've (almost) had enough articles on the Oscars but I just want to share three quotes that I really enjoyed from Rob Scheer, Nick Davis and Jeffrey Wells

"I've got to say, it still makes no sense to me that this movie is an Oscar winner for Best Picture. It's too challenging, too cerebral, too symbolic, too meditative, too cynical, too phenomenal. It doesn't make sense. This is the award that's supposed to go to movies that say racism is bad or wittily hypothesize the backstory of writing of "Romeo and Juliet" or commemorate the Holocaust. It's not supposed to go to morally murky, violent Coen Brothers movies with abrupt, thought-provoking endings that basically impart the message that society is quickly going to shit. What the fuck has happened to the Oscars? I have no idea, but whatever it is, it's something worth celebrating."-Rob Scheer on No Country For Old Men's win

"Swinton didn't win for a single reason other than her performance, with the slight exception of Michael Clayton's shutout in other categories. Even there, plenty of well-liked nominees go home empty-handed every year ... Otherwise, though, the critics didn't help her, beyond the rave reviews from several months ago: somehow, when prize season arrived, they only had eyes for Amy Ryan. She didn't have a Globe or a SAG. She isn't, remotely, a Hollywood elbow-rubber. She isn't "owed" in any way the Academy recognizes (and certainly not the way Ruby Dee is). She isn't the young thing of the moment. She didn't play a likeable character. She didn't play the character in a simply digestible way. Her part wasn't showy, though it was generously featured. The general public has a dim sense of her as the White Witch of Narnia, but little else. Why did she win? It's the performance, stupid... Good enough to persuade voters on its own terms once they got around to seeing it, and good enough to qualify as the best winner in this category since the proximate wins of Peggy Ashcroft and Dianne Wiest in 1984 and 1986—if not the best since Vanessa Redgrave won in 1977, and in virtually the same dress, plus a left sleeve. For all the well-earned reputation of insiderism and errant, delayed sentiment that the Academy has accrued over time, they don't always vote that way, and when they don't, it's glorious."-Nick Davis on Tilda's win

"These are some of the best movies that the filmmaking culture is turning out now. Every year there are at least 20 or 25 films that are somewhere between excellent, very good or good enough to watch and think about later. If regular people in Boston and Saskatchewan are living such insulated and cut-off lives that they can't be bothered to go to some of these films unless it has an advertised 'happy pill' vibe then the hell with them. They're children. I have no time for childishness, and neither does anyone else of any worth. Life is short."-Jeffrey Wells on the same dumb knee jerk 'why haven't I heard of these films?' inexplicable whining that I was bitching about yesterday. [Go get 'em Jeffrey!]

The Tilda win was by far my favourite win on the night, not only is she one of my favourite actresses, her performance in Michael Clayton is so evil and so unflattering, I agree on all those points you raised Nate about the likelyhood of her not getting, yet they finally awarded someone on pure performance instead of surrounding politics...